Neighbourhood News

On Sunday, we held our first meeting with members of the CWNA, BIA, and experienced volunteers, to discuss a potential safe walk program in the Church Wellesley neighbourhood. While we learned a lot about what a successful safe walk program looks like, we still have many questions that need to be answered. We want to create something that is sustainable in the longer term, and that will take time and ongoing community efforts.

We are looking for help immediately doing research in 4 areas:

Outreach (making sure we’re in contact with agencies, organizations and advocates working with vulnerable people in our neighbourhood),

Technology (evaluating potential technology we could use to maximize the efforts/safety of our volunteers, or that people can use on their own)

Community (looking at programs from other cities, colleges, and universities)

Funding (what funding sources might we be able to access).

If you reached out and offered to help in an organizing capacity, please check your email or FB messages later today for a link to a survey. If you didn’t mention this in your message to us, or don't yet see a message from us, you can take the survey here.

In the short term, we are also looking for help developing an awareness campaign for personal safety practices - if you can offer writing or design help please let us know in the survey as well.

For everyone else who has offered to help with walking or answering phones, we will be contacting you, but not quite yet. In the meantime, we can all watch out for each other. If you see someone who looks like they need help, and you’d be in a position to help, ask if they do. Check out some personal safety tips from the City of Toronto here https://goo.gl/Kc49pf, and try to have a trusted contact who knows where you are and when you should return.